The destruction and exile experienced by the Israelites were not random accidents of history, but the exact fulfillment of ancient divine warnings. Yet, alongside the pain of these events lies a deep tragedy: the people failed to learn from their suffering, missing the chance to wake up spiritually and return to God.
The disasters struck the nation exactly as they had been warned long ago in the Torah of Moses, with nothing left out [רש״י, יוסף אבן יחיא]. Some note that the punishment went even further, bringing additional troubles upon the people that were never even written in the Torah [אלשיך]. These hardships did not happen all at once. They arrived in stages, beginning with smaller difficulties meant to wake the people up and encourage them to change their ways. Only when these early signs were ignored did the more severe curses fall upon them as a full punishment for their sins [מלבי״ם, ביאור שטיינזלץ].
Despite the mounting suffering, the people completely failed to respond correctly. They did not pray, plead for mercy, or seek to appease God [מצודת ציון, יוסף אבן יחיא, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. There are different views on exactly when this failure took place. Some explain that the lack of prayer happened earlier, while the people were still living securely in Jerusalem. During that time, prophets warned them of the approaching danger, but they refused to listen [מצודת דוד]. Others emphasize that even after the terrible suffering had already begun, the people still did not turn to God to ask for mercy and turn away from their sins. On a deeper level, the prayer they lacked was not just a simple request for forgiveness. They failed to ask for God's help to overcome the inner negative desires that hold a person back from changing, even when they are in the middle of a crisis [אלשיך].
The root cause of this failure to repent was a deep misunderstanding of reality. The people did not stop to learn, observe, and recognize God as the God of truth, nor did they dedicate themselves to studying His Torah [מצודת דוד, יוסף אבן יחיא, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. The primary approach among commentators is that the greatest mistake the people made in their thinking was blaming their troubles on pure chance. Instead of understanding that their suffering was a direct response to their sins and a precise act of divine supervision matching the warnings in the Torah, they treated the events as blind acts of nature. Because they refused to open their minds and see the divine truth hidden within the crisis, the path to true change was blocked, and the punishment struck them with its full force [מלבי״ם, אלשיך].